


Everytime A Bell Rings An Angel Gets His Wings

by HecoHansen31



Category: The Last Kingdom (TV)
Genre: Gen, Imprecise Talk of Afterlife Mixing Various Set Ups, Mention of Death, Modern AU, Other Various Incorrect Things, mention of poop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:13:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27197650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HecoHansen31/pseuds/HecoHansen31
Summary: Waking up with no knowledge of whatever happened to you never means anything good, even more if you end up waking with a new and important duty to fulfill.
Relationships: Eadith/Eardwulf
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	Everytime A Bell Rings An Angel Gets His Wings

**Author's Note:**

> (A/N): Hello there, lovelies!
> 
> This is my enter for the ‘TLK-October’ by @tsukkinami!
> 
> (I am very excited for also the November challenge and I am already browsing my ideas for the new fic I’ll have to come up with!).
> 
> Thank you for creating this and I hope you’ll enjoy this, although it is a very ‘different’ fic, set up in a modern AU, with what I am sure is a very OOC! Eadith, but I do hope you’ll like it!
> 
> Also a few thoughts.
> 
> Atropos and Moira, goddesses of Destiny or better said as the ones that hold and take care of the thread of life (and Atropos is the one that cuts the thread).  
> Matelda, character of Dante’s “Inferno” who has the precise purpose of helping purifying and cleaning souls that will later get into Paradise.  
> Lethe, infernal river that will make you forget everything that you have lived.

When she woke up the light in her eyes, her last memory, was lightly dimmed by the solemn atmosphere she found herself in and as her eyes lightly came to adapt to the whole world surrounding her, she understood that she wasn’t in the complete darkness, anymore.

She was in a church.

And as she searched through her mind, she found the definition of a church.

But strangely she couldn’t remember her name, no matter how deep she dug in her head trying to discover something more than the awful atmosphere around her.

Her throat was still choked and spasmed agonizingly as she pushed herself to try to utter the name out of her lips.

But there was no use and eventually all she could do was walk in the path right in front of her, thinking that if she couldn’t remember what she was doing there, she might have as well tried to find some information about herself from the place she had woken up into.

Or where she had been pushed in, by the fact that she was standing on her own two feet, almost as if she had been just created on the front door of the spectral place,

Which was spooky.

But not knowing anything about herself because of what looked like a temporary black out in her mind, this could as well have been her house.

Although it looked like it came out from a horror movie.

Perfect: she knew two things since she had opened her eyes.

Churches and horror movies.

And she wondered for a moment what that strange match meant.

Had she been in a cult before?

The idea definitely rendered all her surroundings a bit more justifiable, since if she had just woken up in some kind of cult crisis induced horror story, she would have probably woken up same utter confusion of that moment.

But the place looked strangely… empty.

And she knew that if there was one thing that horror movies had taught her was that cults wouldn’t leave you alone.

Even if you put a few good countries between yourself and them.

But then something caught onto her attention and she realized that the place wasn’t empty anymore, but instead on the first row of the thick and blackish bench she saw an old veiled lady shrunk in herself, in a way that made her seem like some kind of harmless ghost.

But she might have been also a vengeful spirit.

And she wondered for a moment if she hadn’t just lost her mind completely.

Or if she was on the set of a horror movie, too deep in her role of the poor and desperate victim of the horrific ghost…

… and yet her feet moved forward towards the old lady, but as she walked further up, she found out that there were two others in the row behind the initial figure, with their heads put down on the back of the bench in front of them, completely cloaked in what looked like a thick veil of pure night.

And hadn’t she been so sure that this was either a manic dream or a well-written movie, she would have thought that she had seen the threads in their cloaks scrunch up and move on its own.

As if they wanted to escape the fabric.

The ladies didn’t meet her gaze as she shamelessly looked at them, but they obviously felt her presence, suddenly starting a devilish lullaby that must have been some kind of awful prayer, tight-lipped and in some dark language.

And yet it only enhanced the atmosphere around her.

And the rhythm of it grew alongside her steps, till she was in front of the veiled woman on the front row, unlike her ‘friends’ with her back held up high to allow herself to stare deeply and longingly onto the stand of the eucharist.

But there wasn’t any admiration in her eyes, just a tight-lipped glare.

But it wasn’t the open blasphemy in them that made her jump back of a scared surprise.

It was the pure absence of eyes that shook her to the very core.

Well the FX must have been very very proud of themselves, because she almost shitted in her pants at that sight…

But it seemed too real to be a simple make-up.

Some green screen shit probably…

“… you took your sweet time, little one” muttered the woman and the breath was stuck in her lungs since she didn’t know how the hell the woman had seen or perceived her presence.

She just knew that she was scared and suddenly cold, glad that the sightless gaze wasn’t set up on her, but yet somehow annoyed by the haughty tone of the woman.

She lightly stuck her tongue out to the woman, almost childlike but all the main characters in horror movies did such idiotic things at the climax of the movie.

And if some kind of monster just wanted to take her out why should she wait patiently her turn?

Being on his nerves would have saved her the anxiety that was starting to burn up her stomach and that confusion that was building in her mind.

“… don’t stick your tongue out to me, sweetheart”.

She stopped her gesture midway, risking of biting down on her tongue.

Painfully.

And the woman smirked at her clumsiness and quickly patted down the spot of the harsh rock where she sat, in an offer that she wasn’t sure that she could refuse, but she willed her body to slow down as the rhythm of the women’s mantra became more relaxed and lower in its tone, becoming a whisper.

Swallowed by the night.

“You are a newbie” muttered the woman, as she tore he eyes away from the woman, just as she slipped in next to her, careful to even come near to that woman, something hissing in her clothes and the same nightmarish moving thread working its magic through the elegant features of an eternal outfit.

Hadn’t she been…

… eyeless…

… the old woman would have been quite the elegant lady.

And with a quick gaze shot to her, as the lady shifted her whole body to take in the young woman in front of her, she knew that the nightmarish creature knew exactly what she was feeling.

How she was feeling.

“… oh… I mean… I don’t have much… experience as an actress” she didn’t know why she uttered that, but she was glad to defeat the sound that was thrumming in her ears, a mixture of the complete nightly silence and the enchanted lullaby that the two women behind her emitted “… not that I can… remember much of what I was before …”.

“Oh, that’s a side effect of the Lethe” muttered the woman as she threw her arms to the air, again that annoyed look like a secretary that had just been handled a pile of paperwork a few minutes after she had clocked out “… I always tell Matelda that she shouldn’t hold the souls down for so long… but Gosh… ‘she doesn’t tell me how to do my work so I don’t have any saying in what she does…’ and you’d think it’d be demons the bitches of the Passing…”.

“… Matelda?” she uttered out, the name sounding as strange on her tongue as the mention of the ‘Passing’, but she knew one thing for sure.

Lethe was an infernal river.

And if she wasn’t wrong (confirmed by the words of the woman in front of her) it was meant to delete the memories of the souls, before they went over to Paradise, after their staying in Purgatory.

And had she… been called a soul?

“Oh yes, my dear! An awful woman truly… no manner… just a quick service and not even a smile” and to reinforce that she was utterly different from that she smiled.

Showing her a teethless smirk.

Well, hadn’t she shitted her pants at the sight of her eyes, she had now.

Was it even possible for a soul to shit her pants?

“… and who are you?” the voice choked on her throat.

And again, the woman did notice it.

And the smile that she was gifted with wasn’t in any way comforting.

“Oh what a rude woman I must have seemed to you, little rose” muttered softly the woman, as she promptly put one leg over the other and she swore that she had seen the thread starting to push itself to move onto her leg as she did this gesture “… I am Atropos, inflexible ruler of the thread of life, alongside my sisters”.

And as if it was natural, she turned around to look around to shoot a quick look at the women, who didn’t raise their head from their prayers, but the sensation of two other pairs of eyes made her feel at even more unease.

And as she made to raise up from her sat position, she found herself stuck there.

“… aren’t you familiar with me?” her voice was now an hushed growl and for a moment underneath the pretense of a gentle old grandma with a style that brought a designer best nightmares, she could see a decaying figure.

Genderless and utterly primordial.

And she remembered who she was.

Apparently, her ample vocabulary also knew the Moira, the goddesses that spun the thread of life, eventually cutting it when one’s life ended.

And if she had met one of them, the last one, she must have been pretty much dead.

That explained much.

She would have still preferred the horror movie solution.

But hey… you couldn’t have everything.

“… I’ll take that as a yes” hissed the woman “… I always make a certain impression on the ones that come here for the first time, but don’t worry, sweetie, I don’t eat humans, unlike many of my Mother’s other children…”.

That was comforting.

And if she was dead there wasn’t much that could have physically pained.

Except trying to remember what was going on.

That gave her quite the headache.

“… but we have to speed this up, because I have an appointment in a few centuries, although for you it is something like… five minutes…” the blabber created more confusion in her mind that the childish sound that the woman’s sisters produced intensified in a way that made this all seem like a bad joke.

Except it was the truth.

“… you have been chosen to become a guardian angel, congratulations”.

A guardian angel?

She hadn’t even known that she was dead till a few minutes ago!

“… like the ones… with wings?”.

“Oh, not immediately! You gotta earn them, first!” commented the woman cheerily, almost happy that she was slowly getting the entire story without her having to speak about anything.

And honestly, she would have actually felt better if the frightening creature had kept her mouth closed.

Would she have become also like that?

No, no angels were pretty!

“… what does… what does this mean?” Gosh, if she wasn’t dead, she would have been because whatever had prompted this psychological trip must have been quite… heavy on her whole body and was already fucking up her mind.

“That you are assigned to a human! You keep them safe and if you manage to do that… you get your wings and eventually a few discounts for Paradise…”.

“… I thought… that was what Purgatory was for…” she mumbled underneath her breath more for herself than anyone else, but the woman still caught onto what she had said and with a conspiratorial glint in her absent eyes.

And she leaned painfully closer to her.

She swore that she smelt like something between a bad perfume gone rotten and the warmness of burnt fire.

“… well you see… the big boss… God, Allah and whatever you like calling them… just thought that the whole process with the Purgatory was slow… annoyingly slow. You pray a bit… you talk with other spirits and you hope those that the people you left behind will pray for you and then what?! You get automatically admitted in the Paradise club!”.

That seemed like a bad thing from the woman’s mouth.

“… so the big boss came up with this, his own Charlie’s angels… less latex suits and more chastity till marriage and all that bullshit” with a soft look the woman shot a small smirk of penance to the upper floor and she couldn’t help but hold herself almost protectively about what would have come next “… you complete tasks, you get stars and in the end… puff… club Paradise is waiting for you”.

“That seems very…” ‘downright out of a reality TV series’ “… tiring”.

“And you haven’t heard the best part” the twisted smirk on the woman’s rotten mouth definitely didn’t talk about anything ‘good’ “… you can’t refuse, so smile and let me get a small photo for our badge”.

And before she could even protest or say anything a flash of light completely swamped her and no matter the fact that she protectively covered her eyes with an arm, she was still blinded by the powerful shot, similar to the one that had brought you there.

Should she have expected any kind of tunnel after the light?

But after the light came screams, which made her think that whatever that conversation had been, she was back to planet Earth.

A place that smelt bad and was half as noisy as the stank that surrounded her sensible body.

Fresh shit.

Perfect.

She just hoped it wasn’t hers.

But as she was able to finally see again, she was relieved to discover that she hadn’t actually shitted her pants, although she had to cut herself a bit of slack since she had basically discovered that she was dead and she had met what looked like an ancient monster.

It didn’t take her long to realize where she was.

She was in a child’s nursery, so she wasn’t too surprised to discover that there was a crib in the center of it, where a pinkish babe was wiggling around softly and comfortably in what looked like a diaper full of shit.

Was… was her purpose as an angel to change diapers?

She approached the crib carefully, almost as if she was expecting the Earth beneath her to open and swallow her wholly in an image that would have pleased her more than the prospect of changing diapers.

If she knew one thing about herself, after that sudden memory loss was that she didn’t exactly like changing diapers or caring for children.

But the child was strangely cute.

Button nose and light eyes, and a smile that would have opened the doors of the most desperate of hearts.

Although the smell was quite… an obstacle to her wanting to put her arms around the child and hug it tight to her chest.

The other sudden intrusion was the fact that suddenly a voice was heard, matched by the cries of the babe that had suddenly lost any interest for her and now was calling out desperately for its mother, answering with a series of ‘cuttie patootie’ names that made her puke a bit in her mouth.

She hadn’t definitely been a mother before the whole death and ‘angel thing’.

She wondered whether she should have hidden herself.

She was sure that whether the whole ‘you are an angel’ was true or it wasn’t, it definitely would have been quite curious to find a fully-grown woman in your child’s room.

Even more when she had no idea to why she was there.

The child seemed able to perceive her, as its clear gaze shifted onto her and like the cutest sack of potatoes she had ever witnessed it started to roll up closer to her, just for her to back off and flee underneath a curtain as the door’s handle lowered itself, announcing the mother’s presence.

“… I am coming, my dearie!”.

She held her tongue, putting an hand over her mouth as a good measure to stop herself from saying anything that would have revealed her presence, although she was pretty sure that the thin light blue-colored curtains didn’t help her much.

And as she was halfway through shifting under the desk of what looked like an half-built vanity, she found that she hadn’t managed to run out the horrible monster who had shifted onto a more human appearance, complete of one eye that was burying itself deep in her soul.

But she was sure that with or without it the woman could see her perfectly.

She wanted to scream, but with a quick look to the domestic scene of the doting mother changing the crying babe, she again bit down her tongue, making the woman let out a powerful laugh, the kind that was probably buried under a lot of layers of self-control.

And probably that hadn’t been uttered since 1967.

‘They can’t hear us…’ and she moved closer to the woman, gently passing a hand through her stomach, with no kind of reaction from the human that just kept her work ‘… and they can’t touch us’.

Was that some kind of superpower you gained through birthing a child?

Because she wasn’t wholly convinced about the fact that she was an angel.

“… this little one, instead…” and the child hid immediately her face away from the woman, scared and intensifying her cries, that sounded like a delightful song to the monstrous woman “… can… and she’ll always be able to see you, as she grows up, to let you do your own duties as a guardian angel”.

“I am not sure…”.

“You have been chosen because during your life you acted as a protector to somebody close to you, till the last minutes of your death”.

Wasn’t that consoling.

“Now you’ll cover the position of the guardian angel to the same creature that breathed her first breath once you breathed out your last” now the monster tone had left out any ironic comment “… if you manage to make her have an happy life you’ll get your wings, understood?”.

Not that it was a true question, but she found herself nodding her head.

“… now that everything is clear, I’ll leave you two to get to know each other” and turning another time to the child that had just calmed herself down, making her scream right in the ear of her mother, she vanished in thin air with a small ‘… works every time’.

And then the newly-angelled angel realized that she was in big trouble.

She hadn’t a name

And Any basic knowledge about her life.

But she had a duty.

And that was a good starting point.

In her internship period as a ‘guardian angel’ she discovered that babies didn’t do much, except being cute little shits that pooped too much and cried, when you were least expecting.

And the child she was supposed to babysit, who she had horridly named ‘Experiment 1’, wasn’t an exception to any of those activities, and instead she had had to add to the list of ‘things baby did’ the ‘sleeping for entire hours and waking up angry’, which prompted her many times to run around the house worried.

She had discovered that she wasn’t visible and neither able to come in contact with any human that wasn’t ‘Experiment 1’, but she could move a few things a bit around, not the in atrociously painfully way Patrick Swayze did in ‘Ghost’, but she had still limited movements.

Her body denying her as soon as she forced herself to do anything more than make something fall like an annoyed cat to shift the mother’s attention on ‘Experiment 1’ ‘s labored breathing, when she had caught a small minor sickness.

Prompting her to reach out to a doctor.

She had then discovered that she could travel in cars, and although it was like being completely invisible, once she had been hit in the face by an heavy travel bag, which had gone through her as if she had never been there, it had also hurt the place on her face that it had first come in contact with.

At the doctor’s office it had been revealed to her and the mother that, hadn’t it been for her bringing it to the mother’s attention, the baby would have probably developed a lung sickness further along, where it might have been dangerous.

Well… she had managed to get the child through the first month just fine.

She considered that an utter success.

And they actually celebrated the first month of the baby’s life.

People, related to the child, came to visit the mother.

They crowded the room and although the angel knew that she should have felt just a tiny bit surrounded by a crowd, she felt like she was just more alone.

The fact that she was dead, although an angel, hadn’t settled till then.

And another thing settled in her.

Where was the child’s father?

At the birthday party, as she managed to stole away a small piece of cake (she did seem to still enjoy the sweetest pleasures of life, although she didn’t need them to survive) she had found a very interesting piece of conversation to follow like a telenovela, hidden under the thick table of the kitchen.

“Do you think… he feels better?” a tempting voice of the old lady she had framed as the Experiment 1’s grandma spoke to another younger lady and with the confidence they were touching each other to comfort each other, they were evidently related.

Mother and daughter.

Did her own mother mourn her?

Had she had any siblings?

“… he feels better…” the words seemed painful to get out and then the woman pushed everything out as if she had just managed to break the lock that kept her thought in the jail of her mind “… physically, but…”.

“He has a child, he should worry about that!” the older woman retorted and also in her something had been utterly broken to make such an anger be released on the younger woman who shifted away in an evident show to hid herself from such a rage.

And for a moment she was happy to be completely invisible to others.

“… mom, it isn’t easy” the voice that came from the door of the kitchen spoke of tired nights and a pain that just flourished with each step and it belonged to Experiment 1’s mother.

The elegant dress she had chosen hung heavily onto her full frame, making her same like a scarecrow.

“… he lost… so much in the incident, you need to give him time”.

And she had just sneaked away slowly as the three women looked at each other in an intense fight to who would have lowered firstly their gaze, speaking of pain, rage and protectiveness.

And the question just remained in her mind.

But the tried to focus her mind on easier tasks.

By day she would be found by the child’s side and during the night she would sometimes go through the door of that small house, like a ghost, to explore the small apartment complex, hoping to find something about herself, but she just discovered that the girl of the fourth apartment had a scandalous affair with her boyfriend’s sister.

And that the old man who lived on the first floor hadn’t been able to see his grandchildren for a year now and would sometimes call out their name whenever she would stumble into a small object, making the smallest of noises.

And the Karen on the sixth floor had a collection of MAGA hat that had found its way in the trash bin, ‘accidentally’.

Then two months into her newest ‘work’ the child’s father came back home.

And she had almost flung herself to take a curious look at him him, spying him from the threshold of the kitchen that was the first room he’d appear in after passing the entrance and where Experiment 1’s mother was waiting gently trying to usher the crying babe, startled awake by the sound of the doorbell.

She, herself, had been trying to make silly faces to calm her.

But the child just hid her face in her mother’s neck and cried louder, probably breaking her mother’s eardrum.

It was quite a picture to come back for the father.

Who looked like he had been through a tornado, that had left just his clothes intact.

But his aspect wasn’t the first thing she focused onto.

But on the fact that for a moment, for a split moment, he seemed to almost see her.

And he saw her as if he recognized her.

And then he went back to staring at the mother of his child, offering gently the child in her arms, but he kept his own to his side as if to say that he wasn’t interested, making her huff in pure annoyance as the angel just burned a hole through him.

For the first time she felt like she was recognizing him.

And that feeling of being stared upon intensified.

As did the mother’s annoyance at the father’s refusal of holding the newborn child, suddenly more and more terrorized by the new figure and crying in a way that didn’t go away even when her angel cooed softly at her.

“… we can’t continue this way” the mother muttered tightly, as she pushed the child away from him and, although he had been colder than ice some kind of pain for the refusal filled his eyes, highlighting some kind of pained reaction to that denial “… it isn’t healthy for both of us and for… her…”.

“You haven’t even named her yet” the man’s eyes shifted on the ground and the angel in the side stayed silently behind, but her ears were pricked with interest “… it’s been what… a month… already…”.

The words meant something else, but he denied anything else as he left the words unsaid.

And the angel wanted to desperately know what he had meant with them.

“… I couldn’t…” confessed the mother “… and it wouldn’t have been fair”.

‘And you are changing the subject’ wanted to mutter the invisible angel, feeling like the man was shifting far and farther away from the truth.

And she needed to desperately know it.

“… you can choose whatever you want” the man muttered tired and the woman had a sudden spirit of rebellion, her eyes shining of pure lighting as she answered him, meanwhile the child had finally quieted herself.

“Then what about her name?”.

She knew they didn’t mean the grandmother’s name or anybody else.

And from the hurt look on the man’s face, he just had remembered something painful.

As the piercing pain that pinched the angel between her lungs.

“… no” it was a refusal that was so deep that it almost sounded like a growl.

“Eardwulf” it was the first time she heard the name and again that silver lining of remembrance rang true in her ears.

Intense as an annoying ringing of bells.

At 5 a.m. in the morning.

“… no we can’t” now the voice was choked and she could see the tears he wanted to desperately shed and the ones the woman had already started at seeing the love of her life completely destroyed “… she is gone and she isn’t…”.

“It isn’t meant to go this way!” protested thrillingly the woman as she moved to gently push an hand comfortingly onto his shoulder, obtaining no other response than a slight push that made her almost stumble backwards, exactly as she almost lost her grip onto the child.

And before the angel could properly think it through, she grabbed the child through the mother’s arm, strangely entering her body for a single moment.

But she didn’t exactly think through the whole dynamic she was just happy to have the child in her arm.

And the father looked at his gesture shook.

And he again, looked at her again.

Through the mother’s mouth she heard her saying:

“She doesn’t have to be gone for ever” the man now looked slightly a bit more convinced, something in him being so tired of fighting against an invisible enemy and he just shrugged his whole body in a relaxed pose.

“It is just… I lost her… it is all my fault”.

And for a moment a flash of light invested the guardian angel completely.

The scream of a hysterical man next to her and the feeling of something underneath her rolling through the floor as a constant beeping heightened its strength right when her lids became too heavy for her...

… and she fell.

She fell asleep.

Was this all linked.

“It isn’t your fault” muttered the woman tiredly, but with a gentleness that just petrified him on the spot and gently she tried again to lay the child in his arms and although rigidly he accepted the small creature, just as the guardian angel backed off, standing between the mother and father..

The father was just a natural at holding the baby, quickly learning to hold her hand and when he met her eyes, he fell in love.

And for a moment the guardian angel felt like she was in her rightful place.

And again, in that moment when the man turned his head suddenly to her she knew that he could see her.

And she knew.

“… you are right… she is gone, but not… forgotten” he muttered softly and then he gave her name back “… yeah… Eadith seems like a good name”.


End file.
